* On Business Knowledge: “There are two kinds of industry know-how: specific knowledge and wisdom. Specific knowledge changes every six months. Wisdom lasts forever. The beginning entrepreneur, if he is lucky, can make do with specific knowledge. But, unless he’s accumulating wisdom, his potential for growth over the long term is low.” – Michael Masterson
* On the Motivation to Write: “One must be pitiless about this matter of ‘mood.’ In a sense, the writing will create the mood…. I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes… and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.” – Joyce Carol Oates via James Clear
* On Intellectual Input: “I notice that when all a man’s information is confined to the field in which he is working, the work is never as good as it ought to be. A man has to get a perspective, and he can get it from books or from people – preferably from both. This thing of sleeping and eating with your business can easily be overdone; it is all well enough – usually necessary – in times of trouble but as a steady diet it does not make for good business; a man ought now and then to get far enough away to have a look at himself and his affairs.” Harvey S. Firestone (written in 1926)